That was JVN being a confusing meanie. That picture is just a picture of Dave (and others) while on vacation during the summer, and it has no intentional relation to this year's game. JVN must have thought that it was funny after the topic of trains came up in this thread. Just to keep things straight, Dave Lavery is the only one currently interfering with this thread who knows what the game is, so nobody else knows how relevant the train picture may or may not be.

...so if the game DOES involve stairs and trains, JVN will be regarded as some kind of psychic hero.

Because I am bored and have no life, I have decided to make a diagram and a list of possible obstacles if the game were an obstacle course with a train theme.

Obstacle List

Getting over stairs
Shooting a ball into a lunacy-like goal
Going over a bump to activate 2 switches that must be held down at same time while on a corn field
Throwing a ball(maybe not as big as overdrive) over a goal
Shooting a football into a high goal while scoring a soccer ball XD
Etc

Note that if no robots can do a task then they will have to take the longer way by driving around.

I'm pretty sure Dave just wants to have his signature somewhat down from the text in the post, and a period (or, as was the case last fall, Morse Code) is about the only way to do that without vBulletin helpfully removing all the blank space.

Dave posted an explanation to that effect 2 or 3 years ago.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karibou

Dave Lavery is the only one currently interfering with this thread who knows what the game is, so nobody else knows how relevant the train picture may or may not be.

Maybe it means we'll have to participate in some kind of Training...?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyler Hicks

I noticed that First says "check out the 2011 game hint"....does this mean they'll only give us that one hint? I don't remember if they usually put a #1 by it.

The short answer is "we don't know". Some years there is only one clue, some years there are more than one. We will not know for certain until Kickoff.

Now this is a very confusing hint and still is throwing us all for a loop. Love all the ideas being tossed around. I am wondering if since we are going for the 20th anniversary, if we will maybe be doing a repeat or a remake of "Maize Craze".

Reasons why it could be:
1. "Locomotion" can be used to move and haul trailers around the field to herd tennis balls.
2. The columns look just like trailers.
3. The fact she is holding onto the column like the robots could use to haul them around the field to make it more interesting.

Just figure I would throw my hat in the ring. See what others are thinking.

People keep hinting at stairs, correct? This is a special year in FIRST, correct? Stairs have been used in a previous game, correct?

What other previous game elements/features can you extract from this game hint? It's possible we're seeing a combination of games from years past.

This is another key idea. I mean a lot of other games fall into this picture.

"Zone Zeal" was moving trailers that you had to latch onto and move around and collect balls in there
"Raising the Bar" had to deal with the stairs
"Aim High", "Stack Attack, "Ramp and Roll" all had ramps to climb up to score points.

I mean there is multiple different ideas. Maybe there taking the best of all the worlds and pulling out one piece in each game and make it an awesome 20th anniversary game!!

Now this is a very confusing hint and still is throwing us all for a loop. Love all the ideas being tossed around. I am wondering if since we are going for the 20th anniversary, if we will maybe be doing a repeat or a remake of "Maize Craze".

Reasons why it could be:
1. "Locomotion" can be used to move and haul trailers around the field to herd tennis balls.
2. The columns look just like trailers.
3. The fact she is holding onto the column like the robots could use to haul them around the field to make it more interesting.

Just figure I would throw my hat in the ring. See what others are thinking.

never thought about the pole looking like a trailer but it does. Since she is kind of holding it from the front, and that guy in JVN's train picture is trying to push it, maybe its like a reverse Lunacy game where instead of the trailer being ni the back of your robot that it has to be connected in the front of your robot.

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